Aim

"To make provision for the establishment of a Children's Commissioner; to make provision about services provided to and for children and young people by local authorities and other persons; to make provision in relation to Wales about advisory and support services relating to family proceedings; to make provision about private fostering, child minding and day care, adoption review panels, the defence of reasonable punishment, the making of grants as respects children and families, child safety orders, the Children's Commissioner for Wales, the publication of material relating to children involved in certain legal proceedings and the disclosure by the Inland Revenue of information relating to children."

Main provisions

• Creates the post of a Children's Commissioner for England.• Enables the government to create an electronic record of every child in England, Scotland and Wales to make it easier to trace children across local authorities and government services.• Places a "duty to cooperate" on all services who work to protect children, designed to eliminate the risk of children "falling through the gaps". Services include local authorities, the police, the probation board, the youth offending team, the Strategic Health Authority and Primary Care Trusts, Connexions partnerships, and the Learning and Skills Council. • Makes new statutory bodies called Local Safeguarding Children Boards responsible for child protection.• Requires local authorities in England to appoint a director of children's services.

Background

Lord Laming's report highlighted gaps in the child protection system, in particular a lack of joined-up reporting, which left individual professionals unable to gain a full picture of what is going on in a child's life. The green paper recommended policy changes backed by legislation; the Children's Act was designed to respond to Lord Laming's finding that health, police and social services missed 12 opportunities to save Climbié in part because of a lack of information sharing. The act enables the government to create an electronic profile of every child in England, to include details such as the child's name, address, date of birth, school, GP practice and the name of the person responsible for their day-to-day care.

The act also establishes a Children's Commissioner for England and makes that commissioner responsible for non-devolved matters relating to children in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.

Initial drafts of the bill merely proposed that the commissioner "may have regard to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC)" but the Lords passed an amendment to strengthen the bill amid children's rights campaigners' complaints that the bill failed to promote children's rights.

Criticism

Although the act grants existing UK children's commissioners wide general powers to enable them to initiate inquiries on general issues, the act ensures that commissioners can only carry out formal investigations on the direction of the relevant secretary of state and it also allows the secretary of state the power to withhold subsequent reports.

Critics claimed the role lacked autonomy. Peter Clarke, the Welsh commissioner and incoming president of the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children, described it as a "very weak model".

Carolyne Willow, coordinator of the Children's Rights Alliance, said: "Without powers to access information, to enter establishments, to subpoena witnesses and to meet children in private, the commissioner will be indistinguishable from children's charities."

Liberty questioned the government's decision to allow both the creation of such an extensive database holding information on children and young people, and the choice to make shared information accessible to such a wide range of public bodies.